This activity was inspired by a post at Toddler Approved, where they used baking soda and vinegar to make a fizzy pumpkin project. We decided to use the same concept to make fizzy Valentine’s hearts!
To do this activity, I had to prepare the fizzy paint. I decided to stick with just four, Valentine’s-inspired paint colors: red, purple, blue, and white. For each color, I mixed 1 TBS of paint with 3 TBS of baking soda in our no-spill paint cups.
Then I prepared a cup with vinegar, to which I added some plastic pipettes for the kids to use for suctioning. (Using the pipettes not only helps them to use a reasonable amount of vinegar, it also builds fine motor skills.)
I also prepared a craft tray with a paper heart for each kid.
And QBoy and XGirl had plenty of painting brushes to choose from.
Initially, QBoy and XGirl just thought it was a painting activity, and they happily began applying color to their Valentine’s hearts.
After a while of normal painting, both kids decided to try painting with two brushes at a time.
Once they had done plenty of painting, I brought out the vinegar and pipettes. Since we had used the pipettes before, the kids knew how to use them, but they were not expecting the paint to start bubbling and fizzing.
The oohed and ahhed to watch the reaction between the baking soda in the paint and the vinegar in their pipettes.
They kept adding more and more vinegar in order to make their paint fizzle again and again.
This activity was a big hit with the kids, which I know because they asked to do it again right away. 🙂
More Valentine’s Day learning resources
Products used in this post: